The older population in both developed and developing countries is growing rapidly and the fastest growing segment of the population is those aged 85 years and older. Nocturia, or urinating at night, is a common problem in older persons due to a wide variety of chronic conditions. Men have a higher prevalence of nocturia than women due to the impact that an enlarged prostate gland, present in virtually all older men, has on urinary frequency, urgency and nocturia. For older men who have functional deficits that impair their balance, leg strength or walking ability, or who have visual difficulty at night or unstable blood pressure that may drop when they rise from a sitting or supine position, there is added risk for falling when getting up from the bed to urinate at night. Sleep problems increase at older ages and many older men who urinate multiple times per night complain that their interrupted sleep and inability to fall back to sleep after a trip to the bathroom leaves them unrefreshed the next morning and fatigued the next day.
A wide variety of urinating apparatuses are known in the prior art. Devices devised and utilized for the collection of urine are known which have numerous designs developed to solve a wide spectrum of requirements. The basic components for urine collection include (1) a collection device, to be known here as the receptacle but also known commonly as a urinal, (2) a tube to direct the urine to an exit or a storage device, and (3) a storage container, to be known here as a reservoir. Some of the prior devices may include just component (1), may include components (1) and (3) directly connected while omitting component (2), or may include all three components. For the purpose of this review, it may be useful to consider three general categories of urinating apparatuses: (a) the urinal serves for both collection and storage of urine or is a receptacle devised to be used attached to a more distal storage/disposal system; (b) a hospital-based system of urine collection that uses substantially large equipment that is managed by nursing staff, may attach to hospital beds or may have the urinal remain in bed with the patient or be delivered to the patient by staff; and (c) simpler, often portable devices that use the 3 basic components listed above.
While the aforementioned patents fulfill particular objectives and requirements, they do not describe a lightweight, easy to clean bedside urinal device with a simple component for connecting to the bed for nightly home use, such as by community-dwelling older men.